


Death of a Cad

by anabel



Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28085343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/pseuds/anabel
Summary: As aficionados of Archie Goodwin’s books will be aware,Death of a Cadis notable for its abrupt ending. Fans have long speculated that Goodwin made this authorial choice to conceal some element of this famous case; although Goodwin often fictionalized and anonymized case details in his books, the “D’Souza murder” is obviously the Rodgers cause célèbre.For this special anniversary edition, the Goodwin estate is pleased to present the missing final chapter, as well as a postscript from the late author. DiscoverDeath of a Cadanew!
Relationships: Archie Goodwin/Nero Wolfe
Comments: 21
Kudos: 48
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Death of a Cad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KannaOphelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KannaOphelia/gifts).



**Editor’s Note:**

As aficionados of Archie Goodwin’s books will be aware, _Death of a Cad_ is notable for its abrupt ending. Goodwin was never one for prolonging denouements, but in this case the suddenness of his conclusion is striking. It feels as if it simply falls off a cliff - one moment Cramer has hauled away the culprit and Wolfe is talking to the cleared suspect, and the next the reader is turning the page and only finding the back cover. Fans have long speculated that Goodwin made this authorial choice to conceal some element of this famous case; although Goodwin often fictionalized and anonymized case details in his books, the “D’Souza murder” is obviously the Rodgers cause célèbre.

Well, the world must wonder no longer! The mystery has at last been solved. For this special anniversary edition, the Goodwin estate is pleased to present the missing final chapter (Chapter 23), as well as a postscript from the late author. Discover _Death of a Cad_ anew!

\- Edith Dashwood, Editor

~*~

**Chapter 23**

After Delia and Susan left, Wolfe and I sat in the office in silence for a long time. 

The atmosphere was a strange one, not so much tense as it was meditative. I didn’t feel like being the one to break the silence, and it seemed that neither did he. In all the years we’ve been working together, it’s not often that I get the jump on him, but by gum this time I had. I wasn’t quite sure how he’d take it, and I wasn’t sure it was a good thing that he hadn’t even called for beer.

I used the time to think about the case. I had supposed that he had figured out Susan’s secret early on, and if that wasn’t true, a whole lot of what had happened over the past week became clearer. Why he had been so intent on Susan’s potential as a suspect. Why D’Souza’s concert tickets had been of such importance. Why he had been so curt with me on Monday.

What was less clear was how he’d missed it. Maybe it was the female angle. Wolfe’s a genius and he doesn’t miss much, but he still sometimes turns to me for an expert perspective on the gentler sex. Perhaps Susan’s secret was so female that it simply didn’t occur to him as a possibility. Yet somehow I didn’t buy it.

“When did you know?”

The question was so abrupt I nearly jumped. I collected myself, and didn’t try to dodge. “When you got them here together. What was that, Thursday?”

“And you failed to bring it to my attention.”

Wolfe can be sharp with me, but there was an edge to his voice that I didn’t recognize. My shoulders went up. “I thought you knew. You were talking about Susan having hidden depths.”

“Because of her lie about D’Souza’s last meal, not –”

He stopped.

When it became clear he was done, I stepped in. “Well, that was why. You don’t think much of women in the best of times, and I thought you were leaving the details unsaid out of horror at the idea.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Is that what you think of me?”

The question was rhetorical, but I make a practice of answering Wolfe’s rhetorical questions sometimes, just to keep him on his toes. “Women irritate and confound you. Two of them in love with each other would be double the trouble and double the irritation.”

Wolfe didn’t answer me for a while. I’m used to his silences, so I sat at my desk and looked at Delia’s check. A solid one, ample reward for clearing the name of the woman she loved. The bank balance could breathe easy for a spell.

“I have never been a lover of women, Archie,” Wolfe said, finally. I looked up and he was gazing off into the middle distance, his arms crossed over his chest. “I do not pretend to understand them as you do.”

I smiled. It wasn’t really funny, but it had been a long week. “I can’t pretend I know what it’s like to be a woman who loves a woman, but –”

My turn to cut myself off. I’d been about to say more than I should. I can gab with the best of them, but usually I’m pretty careful to mind myself. I’ve had a lot of practice. You need it, in our line of work.

I was expecting Wolfe to let me slide. He doesn’t generally press me.

This time he did. “But?”

I kept my voice light. “But I suppose I do know what it’s like to love someone you don’t think you can have.”

“Miss Rowan.” His tone had flattened, and he was already turning in his chair, looking to his bookshelf for his latest book. The conversation was over.

It all almost ended there. He would’ve taken his book out, and rung for beer. I would’ve put the check in the safe and called Len to give him the scoop on D’Souza’s murderer. Fritz would’ve served a lushly delicious dinner, and all would’ve gone on in the brownstone as it always had.

Then Wolfe stopped.

I know his body language perfectly. I could read the tension in his shoulders, and the way he held his head. Wolfe is an expert on the world, and I am an expert on Nero Wolfe.

“If you love Miss Rowan, you should tell her. She won’t wait forever.”

He had the wrong end of the stick. Twice in a week - it was a record. For my own reasons, though, I hesitated to disillusion him. “Maybe I already have.”

He shook his head, one decided movement. His back was still turned to me. “If you had finally declared yourself to Miss Rowan, you would be giving your notice. She would hardly wish to live here. You would be travelling the world together.”

He didn't sound like himself, sentences clipped and voice without color. He had few friends, and the prospect of losing one must have been immense. 

“You’re not going to get rid of me that easily,” I said. (Another moment where Wolfe could have let it go, and our lives might have moved on with barely a ripple.)

It was then that Wolfe turned his chair back again and rested his forearms on his desk. He met my eyes, square and unflinching, though there was a strain around his mouth and his face was white. “If you love that woman, tell her.”

“It’s my life.”

“That woman” – he meant Susan – “nearly was convicted of murder because she was too afraid to confess her feelings for the woman she loved. You deserve happiness, Archie, and you deserve love. My opinions about women and their irrationality are irrelevant. You are susceptible to them, and you love her. So be it. _Tell her._ ”

My stomach was in knots. It was worse than that time I nearly got shot by a gangster. “Wolfe. Leave it.”

He shook his head. He was magnificent, full of pure self-sacrifice, a flaming blaze of martyrdom. “Marry her. Have children. I forbid you to name any of them after me.”

“You’re so sure you know everything about me.”

He scarcely seemed to hear me. “If you’re concerned about leaving me without an assistant, I agree that your work has been highly satisfactory, but I will survive. I may be able to persuade Saul –”

“Like hell you will.” I found myself upright, my hands clenching. 

Saul in my chair, in my place, in my room. Saul in the kitchen with Fritz, eating _saucisse minuit_ with Wolfe, crossing swords with Theodore. Saul’s one of my closest friends, but the vivid images that swarmed my brain were intolerable.

Wolfe stared up at me, his gaze intense – and then a bolt of lightning went down my spine, because his eyes slipped past me, unfocused, and his lips started to push out, and in again, and out and in. Without a second’s warning, he had dropped into detecting mode.

If I’d been a coward, I would have stopped him. Told him he was right, made something up about a date with Lily, yelled that the room was on fire. Anything to make those lips stop moving, anything to protect the secret I’d been hiding for so long.

Archie Goodwin is no coward. I stood there, watching Wolfe, my heart heavy, and waited.

Finally he stopped, and his eyes focused again. He looked at me, and he saw me.

“So now you know,” I said, and hardly recognized my own voice.

“It defies all the odds,” he said. 

He sounded peevish, which was far from a new tone for him, but given the circumstances it struck me as darkly funny. Here I was, discovered in a foolish and illegal feeling, and Wolfe’s first reaction was to be peeved that I’d snuck it past him and he’d never realized it.

“The odds don’t always tell the whole story.”

“You – don’t love Miss Rowan,” he said, his words strangely hesitant. “For so long I have thought – it will take me a moment to accustom myself to the idea.”

All the weariness of the last week hit me at once. “Lily’s a wonderful woman,” I said, quietly. “She’ll make some fellow a wonderful wife. And I like the ladies just fine, more than fine. But I’ve only ever been in love one time in my life.”

I looked at him, sitting there in that chair of his. So lazy, so brilliant, so immense, so beloved. He had stolen into my heart so slowly I had never seen it coming, until my heart was entirely his. I loved my life with him, I loved our work, and I loved him. Orchids, danger, relapses, and all.

And now I had lost him.

“It’ll just take me a few minutes to pack,” I said, my head held high. “Goodbye, Wolfe.”

I turned, my feet already set halfway towards the next chapter of my life.

“Pfui.”

I walked toward the door.

“Confound you. Stop.”

I stopped.

“Don’t pretend to be an idiot,” Wolfe said. His voice was truculent, and moving – he’d got up from his chair, come out from behind his desk. 

“I’m not pretending anything.” I didn’t feel entirely calm myself. He was ruining my dignified exit. “I love you, and I’m leaving.”

His sigh was frustrated in the extreme. “If you need a declaration from me to prove what you already know full well to be the truth, you are a bigger ignoramus than Cramer.”

It took the words a moment to penetrate the haze of agony that was clouding my brain. 

I turned around. He was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, gazing at me belligerently. He could not have looked less approachable if he had tried.

“Are you telling me,” I said, my voice cracking, “that you actually – that you –”

He saw something in my face, or heard it in my voice. He uncrossed his arms. “Archie.”

I took two steps forward, grabbed his face between my hands, and kissed him.

He made a noise in his throat that sent my blood racing, and pulled me against him, hard. He kissed me like a man drowning, intent and savage, and there was no gentleness between us, only desire long denied. 

If he felt as I did, if my secret was his –

I kissed him, and he kissed me back, and I’m not going to get all sappy here, but you know how people talk about their heart singing?

I get what they mean now.

~*~

**Postscript**

I thought a lot about it before I decided to publish _Death of a Cad_. It would have been easy to keep that case unpublished, to keep it just for us. But it would have seemed odd for me not to publish a book on the Rodgers case, when Wolfe solving it had been both so public and so brilliant. And I liked having it out there. It meant something to me to flirt with that danger, to put our love story on the page so that all the clues were there for the world to see . Re-read _Death of a Cad_ again now that you know. I dare you.

If you’re seeing this postscript, then the United States has finally pulled its act together. I’m planning to leave Samantha Rowan-Granger in control of my literary estate, and she’s known her whole life that her uncles Archie and Nero come as a matched pair; I’ll leave it up to her when to complete the story. We’ve had twenty years together so far, and I hope to have thirty more, even though I know Lady Time makes that unlikely. Perhaps I’ll even get to publish this myself, once I’m not risking a call from the good Inspector Cramer. 

But if not – if this is published long after we’re gone, and our cases and our story are just memories – know this: we loved each other, and we were happy. 

\- Archie Goodwin

~*~


End file.
